a nude beach

bună! 

time flies and another week is in the books. This week was the last week of the transfer:,) which is crazy. Sora anderson will be leaving me to be shipped off 14 hours away to Oradea, and I will be staying in Ploiesti. It was such a good week though and I loved pretty much every second of it. 

-we had a mission-wide conference (For all the missionaries in romania) face to face for the first time since last year! We all gathered together in Buchurest and it was so fun to see missionaries who I have actually never met before face to face and see lots of old friends. Elder Kopischke, a member of the Europe area presidency, and his wife traveled from Germany and spoke with us. It was SO GOOD. What they shared with us was centered alot around 3 Nephi 11 and 18, and President Nelson's most recent talk about having FAITH.

- On the way home from the conference, we met and found 3 new people! We talked to the guy sitting across for us on the train for the whole hour, and even read a couple chapters from the book of Mormon with him, while we were talking with him, we noticed that a younger college-age kid a couple seats and rows away was listening to our conversation with the older man. As we got off the train, the younger guy started talking to us, and said he had actually met with missionaries about 3 years ago. He seemed pretty interested and we were able to get his Instagram. Lastly, we took a taxi on the way home from the train station and even our taxi driver was also so interested! He said he has always seen the elders on the streets in the past, and that he always wondered who they were. 

- Lots more media stuff! we had a meeting with the Hungary media sisters and our media marketing mentor from salt lake, and the missionary department and had her help us with some of our ads. She also basically told us that the missionary department is rethinking the budgets, and they will probably start doing budgets based off percentage of people being taught that come from the ads, makes sense.... but for us that is NOT amazing, considering we have only 6% being taught! We are doing everything we can to get that number higher!

- We visited some older less-active members, who due to some health problems can't really make it to church anymore, but they are just the sweetest!! Our visit is probably the only "exciting" thing they had penciled in their schedules for the week, and they love having us over. Between the 3 houses we went to, I think I drank about 10 cups of grape fanta and we were not OK for the rest of the night, but it was a fun day.

- We went to the BEACH last week and I loved every second of it. Ok maybe every second besides the seconds we had when we realized that clothes here are optional for people on the beach! And everyone seemed to opt for the "no clothes" option! Nothing like a bunch of old clothes-less Romanians at the beach!

- FAMILY HISTORY IS SO COOL. I have been reading some great family stories from the family search app and I am truly INSPIRED. There is so much to learn from the people that came before me and I admire and look up to their examples. Read some family history this week!! I promise you that you will learn something!

Love you all:) vă iubesc 

Sora Tobler  

a good week

This week was quite another good one if I do say so myself:)

-tuesday: as media leaders in the mission we have a meeting with our Mission President and his wife every week! It has been so amazing working and counseling about the direction of the mission and trouble shooting everything together. The Ruckers are so inspired when it comes to leading the mission, and because of their diligence and faith, we have seen so much success as a mission! We are still currently one of the leading missions worldwide for generating media referrals, and Sora Anderson and I now have the privilege of working with a professional from Salt Lake in further developing our ads and media! It has been a little hard adjusting to being more of a "behind the scenes" person in this new media calling, as we mediate things for the whole mission, and don't have a lot of time to have our own teaching pool, but i have came to love it. 

The miracles that I have been able to see through the work we are doing makes it all worth it!!

- Sora Anderson and I were quite bored with our "sister missionary outfits" and decided to try and put together outfits that matched for the whole week just to change things up. Of course this meant we had to take pictures of every outfit. One day while taking our daily self-timer picture (which we had set up at a tram station), Sora Anderson was quite literally almost hit by the tram. Good thing we captured part of the incident on picture! We are glad Sora Anderson is still with us today.

- friday: for our district activity this transfer, the Elders from Craiova and Pitesti traveled over to us sisters in Ploiesti so that we could have district council in person and bake some goodies, and then deliver them to some of our members. It was fun to meet our district members IN PERSON for the first time this transfer, and we had a good time baking batches upon batches of brownies and then delivering them. 

- Our old member, Mihai, showed up to the church one day with a bunch of old photos of him and his family and it was quite fascinating to hear about his story (apparently he was quite a Heartbreaker), and more about the history of Romania, it was quite a good time. 

- Florea is looking to be baptized at the end of this month maybe!!! 

We are aiming to set a solid date with him this week! 

- Got up and gave a good Lil testimony about general conference and the prophet and his apostles in testimony meeting yesterday! I still get a bit nervous speaking in church in Romanian, but it went well! I am thankful for a living prophet, and the fact that Jesus Christ directs his church in these days!! Is that not the coolest??!

I challenge you all to prepare for general conference this next up coming month! 

Take time to prepare with questions, an open mind, and a prayer in your heart, and I can promise you that you will be able to find answers to your questions!

Love you all:)

Sora Tobler

 

meatball muffins

You know the drill, here are some highlights from this week:

-we made banana muffins this week and 2 of our members thought they were meatballs. Another recipient thought we were at his door with "the priesthood" (the words for "muffins" and "priesthood" are unfortunately very similar)

- It somehow became fall overnight! Had to break out some sweaters this week

- We love prayer! We thought we lost our keys on one of our walks home and had a good Lil panic attack trying to find them as it was already very late and dark outside. Said a quick prayer and found the keys in sora Anderson's backpack (which we had already thoroughly searched) 

- accidently signed up for tennis lessons!

- Sent out a total of 100 referrals from our Instagram page! 

- Finally got in contact with a less active member who hasn't been in contact with missionaries for a good long while now! She was so happy to see us and even gave us some of her aloe Vera plant on our way out the door. She recommended we use it as a face moisturizer "to help with aging" 

- one of our friends after our lesson with her at the church was FLOORED when we told her that we didn't live at the church and just go there practically everyday. She was somehow convinced that we live there full-time like nuns.

One of my favorite verses from this week, "26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them."

Love you all and hope you have an amazing week:)

Sora Tobler

a very riveting round of bingo

Hello hello! I apologize for the missing email from last week.... I just never got around to writing one.

to fill you all in on what you have missed these past 2 weeks, here is the highlight reel:

- our friend Florea is still progressing lots! He came to our ward activity on Wednesday, we had a lesson with him on Saturday, and he came to church on Sunday! 

- The ward activity was actually a major success. 

We "hired" elder and sisters Matthews (a senior couple in bucuresti) to be our party planners, and they did a great job. Sora Matthews came prepared with games, snacks, prizes, and we basically didn't have to do any work. We also played some bingo which was quite exciting. Lots of our members ended up showing up and while the power in the chapel went out half way through, it was a good time.

-we helped our sweet members order some garments. The church website still isn't translated into Romanian, so to order things from the church website, a lot of the members need our help.

-we love the Ruckers!!! The mission president and his wife are the actual best, and I am constantly amazed at the sacrifices that they make for us.

I am so very grateful for repentance! 

Daily repentance, hourly repentance, etc. 

Part of me falsely believed that by this point in my mission, I would be a "perfect" missionary, but that is not how life works. I am still messing up all the time, but through the atonement of Jesus Christ and through repentance, I am able to keep trying, get back up, and start again! 

Take the time to repent daily this week! 

Repentance is positive! 

Repentance is change! 

Love you all lots! 

Sora Tobler 

pioneers of romania!

 buna!

-surprise! sora Anderson and I are staying together for this next transfer! after being convinced for the whole week that 100% sora anderson would be leaving (she's already got a solid 6 months here in ploiesti) we were very ecstatic that she will be staying. 

- we started to meet with our new friend Razvan. he called our number one day out of the blue and we had no idea who it was, but he straight up told us that he wants to start meeting with us! our first lesson was so good and we are excited for him!

-our Instagram is hopping. we run the Instagram and it is going quite well. while we are still building up our following, we send out a couple referrals every single day just from our Instagram page, and my testimony of media work grows everyday. 

-our members are THE BEST. We meet with 2 sisters this week and they are amazing. Sora Matei and Sora Banita have been members for almost 20 years now and have the strongest faith. while being baptized with their husbands and kids, they are the only people in their families that have remained active and have stayed strong to their testimonies over all these years. they have a testimony past the point of going back. they are the PIONEERS OF ROMANIA and such great examples to me! 

"37 And how blessed are they! For they did publish peace; they did publish good tidings of good; and they did declare unto the people that the Lord reigneth." (Mosiah 27:37) 

how cool that we are quite literally publishing peace and good tidings on social media as missionaries right now! 

go publish something uplifting this week! you never know who needs to see it! 

cu mare drag, sora Tobler

1. prietenii mei

2. best view

3. another transfer for the books

4. we are becoming Romanian

5. Brașov surori 

6.